Tasks: a new variety of quest

Most muds have a wide range of so-called "quests". These
quests usually range from the unbelievably stupidly simple (at least,
for seasoned players), which allows newbies to gain an understanding of
who, why, how and what, to the annoyingly difficult. For example, the
slaying of all vermin within a certain area is one of the easier quests
around and saving the world usually goes into the annoyingly difficult
category.

There is another category of quests which allow you to "do the right
thing"TM. The character is allowed to act like the
overpowered boy-scout he or she is and generally help people out (which
is nice). But would not it be nicer if the NPCs would know and react to
that?

Tasks

Cary Grant catching a thief without breaking character!

And this is where tasks come in. What exactly is a task? That totally
depends upon the creator of the task. But as a general guideline, tasks
are smaller than quests. You could compare the range of what tasks could
be to what you think a boy-scout does as tasks. Helping the old lady across
the street, fetching groceries for that friendly old man, etc. etc.
Tasks come in two flavours: class-bound tasks and tasks for
everyone. Since class-bound tasks differ little from tasks for everyone
in their goal (giving the player more options for roleplaying), I will
treat both flavours as one from now on.

Tasks can replace a lot of small quests, making quest-solving more
special while still allowing people to do small things. In my opinion,
fixing somebody's roof or creating a playground for children is nice,
but not necessarily a quest (of course you could dump the materials in a
country far, far away, but that does not make it more fun to solve, now
does it?). With tasks, a coder who codes a "puzzle" that is
solved when a character builds a playground for the local children, need not
code a quest. The coder could create an easy puzzle, while still having
added to the general feel of the world.

Gaming atmosphere

Are you wondering how this will contribute to your game? I will take
another example: that of the thief character.
I have not seen loads of muds, but on the ones I have seen thieves
rarely get the chance to just go out there, break into a house and rob
it. When they did have that chance, it usually was part of a quest.
Also I have seen NPCs "hinting" as to which house a thief could
attempt an breaking and entering into. What I have never seen, was that
a thief could just go out there and thief around.

I do admit that tasks will not solve that for the entire mud, but you
could have your everyday village where each house could be broken into.
This way, the thief character will be much more able to feel like he or
she is playing a real thief.

Similarly, a bard would be able to sing and tell news, etc., being
much more (well, in my vision) bard-like.

Rewards

But this does raise the question of how to reward. How does one reward
better in-character playing? With experience points? With task points?
With extra/new/enhanced abilities?

The answer is actually quite obvious: with in-character rewards. With
this I mean that a character who has done numerous (good) tasks in an
area is recognized by NPCs, sees little children in the street playing
a game in which they act out his or her deeds, gets a better deal when
buying goods; in general he or she will receive better treatment from
the NPCs in that area.

This is easily extended to non-good tasks. The NPCs could be
rumoring about the ungrabbable cat-burglar and (of course) take
safety-measurements. The player would of course find some items iside
the houses he or she entered, which he or she could sell at a local pawn shop or
fencer.

Of the various problems that exist with such a system for rewarding,
I will discuss these two:

This system is not rewarding enough

Nice words, but how on earth do you think it is going to work?

1. The system is not rewarding enough

That depends on how you look at it. Tasks put an emphasis on
roleplaying, and players who wish to win the game will indeed find this
of little interest to them. That is simply because they are not the target
group. Players who play to marvel at the world you and the rest of the
coders have created for them will probably find it rewarding in
itself.

Besides, I never stated that tasks only reward in
roleplaying terms. They can be used as another possibility besides
quests to give players the oppurtunity to enjoy a mud besides
hack'n'slash, but it would defy the concept of a task to make it too
rewarding in game-rule-terms.

2. Nice words, but how is it going to work?

Obviously you need to make the NPCs interact much more with the
player. Also, since tasks are simple, small things, the effect of a task
should be local. For example: cleaning dog-poop from the sidewalks is maybe going
to gain you credit inside one village, but in the next they could not
care less.

Since the tasks, and therefore the NPCs' reaction, can and will vary
greatly from area to area (trust me, cleaning doggie-poop in the
mountains is not what most travellers care about - a clean camping site
is...), it will probably boil down to coding a base-intelligence NPC which
can be inherited by the NPCs of a certain area. This sounds a
lot easier than it is. And for special reactions from
"regular" NPCs (shopkeepers, blacksmiths, bankers, etc.) you might
wish to adjust your standard (eg.) area-shopkeeper inheritable.

The difference between tasks and quests

Without going into the "What is a task" and "What is a
quest" discussions, tasks are small quests with a different
rewarding system. The idea is that the local NPCs really start
interacting in certain ways with the character.

Final notes

I feel that this would seriously add to the
mudding experience. As always, of course, the idea is great, but the
implementation is where the real work should go to make it work. If you
have any ideas about this system, or know of something similar already
done, feel free to e-mail me.